Hello,

I am hoping to be done with my conclusion chapter today.
I will only have a few days to polish my thesis (right now, the chapters are in separate documents). I am tired, but also I need to present something that looks professional. What can I do with regards to the following:
1. Punctuation (especially since there are different conventions with regards to when one should use a specific type of comma or quotation marks).
2. Bibliography. I have not done this yet. I am pretty sure I will be forgetting some references, because this is a very rushed piece of work. What is the worst that can happen is I find out I am missing, or not finding references? I hope it does not come to this.
3. Argument. I feel like I am using different words/expressions, and I probably need to change them, but at this point, if I do the bibliography, and have a draft, I should submit it. There is no time for details.

Also, can I write a conclusion in a day?

Please do not judge me. I am already full of self-hate for being in this position.

Is this to submit your draft thesis to supervisors? If so then why not request an extension? What's the point in submitting something in such as rush if it CAN be helped? Details are important... they really affect the overall picture and quality of a piece of work.

I'd say leave punctuation, terminology, and the bibliography for now and get the conclusion written (yes I think you can write it in a day - I haven't yet written my thesis but I have achieved miracles in writing sections of papers in a day). Then take a break and come back to the punctuation and terminology. Take another break and then return to the references.

But seriously - request an extension to the end of the week at least if you can. If not and you are submitting now then I think it is important to let them know that certain parts are not complete (e.g., you haven't checked the bibliography).

Good luck.

Hey Jambo - a suggestion for your bibliography: just cut and paste all your footnotes and take out your bibliography from there - it will take time but it will be accurate. Mine took 2 days but it's a hefty bibliography (about 12,000 words). This, of course, works if you are using the footnote system, if you are using Chicago and parenthesis (Bush, 2002) does not work. Anyway. You can do it. Get off the forum and go to work :)

I use google scholar for my refs as I find it to be quicker than any software manager (since they often require you to enter the details of the ref yourself which is painfully slow). If you type the author names and a few keywords into google scholar it should bring up the paper. Then click on "cite" and copy and paste in the required format from there. Then you can organise your refs "A to Z" in word and then just go through and check that they're in the right order (especially double check where you have multiple works by the same author with different authors/on different years).

Hope this helps.

I agree with the Google suggestion - it is ever so quick for cutting and pasting references. Just make sure you read over your refs before submitting, as it does the odd strange thing (eg where there's a huge string of authors on a paper, it will miss some of them out and replace with '...').

Get someone else on the proof reading now, and/or get someone else to do your bibliography, and you write the conclusion.

No one (except a crazy few like me) cares about the commas. Just do the basics. You can correct it later.

You will miss some references, it doesn't matter, the examiners may not notice and even if they do they will just give it as a correction.

That's a relief - haha! A bit odd though isn't it?

Hi,
I went through countless redrafts before submission, and then had a rewrite (my story is a long one, won't repeat here, but bad comma usage was involved.)
Anyway, I'd agree with previous comments here, get someone to start looking/proofreading now. Also, try Grammarly. The basic version is okay and is free. As your documents are in seperate documents you might find it easy enough to import. Its really useful anyway.

Good luck!

M

Honestly? If you really can't get an extension they you don't need to be on here asking whether you have to time to get it done, you HAVE to get it done! Just do the best you can and hope there are no howlers. You can polish off any typos after the viva. Good luck!

I used Zotero for my bib, as every article online or PDF was downloaded and linked.

Yeah, I honestly don't know how I would have coped without using a reference manager!